


Adequate Cat

by othersideofthis (hikaru)



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Animal Transformation, Gen, Los Angeles Kings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-18
Updated: 2015-11-18
Packaged: 2018-05-02 07:40:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5240144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hikaru/pseuds/othersideofthis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the draft, most teams end their interviews with him with one last question: “Is there anything else about you that we should know?”</p><p>Nick says: “Sometimes, when I’m stressed out, I turn into a cat.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adequate Cat

**Author's Note:**

> "Write about someone turning into a cat," ionthesparrow said. So I did.
> 
> Join me on [tumblr](http://othersideofthis.tumblr.com/) for both cats and hockey players.

1.  
Nick doesn’t think there’s anything particularly special about him. His mom tells him that all her Shore boys are special, but he doesn’t see it, not the way she keeps saying it to him. He gets up, goes to school, plays hockey. He does his homework on the bus or in the back of his mom’s car. He goes out and parties with his teammates, but not too often, because his parents have set rules for him and his brothers, and he likes things like rules and order and not disappointing people. It’s a theme, really: keep your nose to the grindstone, keep your head down, go hard to the net, stay as long at practice as you can, blend in, be a good teammate.

Nick doesn’t want to be special. Nick just wants to play hockey.

 

2.  
He’s in his first semester at Denver the first time it happens -- or, at least, the first time he remembers it happening. He wakes up feeling small and warm; the room is dark and he feels so cozy that he doesn’t want to even bother moving. “Shoresy,” his roommate says, only he’s yelling, like Nick is not, in fact, in the room right there, curled up under the blanket. “Shoresy, why the fuck is there a cat in your bed?”

Nick sits up, shakes off his blanket. _What are you talking about_ , he wants to say to Beau, but what comes out is a long, plaintive _mroooow._

 _Oh_ , Nick thinks. He looks down. He has paws.

This is … decidedly not good.

 

3.  
At the draft, most teams end their interviews with him with one last question: “Is there anything else about you that we should know?”

Nick always wants to say something useful, like “I’ve been working on my explosive starts so I get out of the gate faster” or “My nutritionist and I are really working to solidify my off-season meal plans” or “I’m really working on growing my defensive game to be a better all-around player”.

Instead, Nick says: “Sometimes, when I’m stressed out, I turn into a cat.”

Nick slips to the third round, but he’s really just happy to be drafted at all.

 

4.  
The thing is, when people find out about the cat thing, they want him to do it on command. They want him to be able to blink his eyes and twitch his nose and drop down to the ground with paws and fur and a swishy tail. But if Nick could just do things by putting his mind to it, he’d rather just be better at winning faceoffs or at chasing down guys on the backcheck or at putting the fucking puck in the fucking net. Of all the things to be able to do on the spot, turning into a cat is definitely not one of them.

He doesn’t mind the cat thing -- it’s just how life is for him, really -- but all things considered, he’d rather spend more time thinking about hockey and less wondering if housekeeping at the hotel is going to freak out if they discover him, a cat, curled up in the sink.

(The sink is a great place. It’s high enough that he feels safe, but not quite so high that he worries about falling down. Nick spends a lot of time worrying about falling. If he hurts himself as a cat, will be also be hurt as a human? And if he’s hurt as a human, will he be hurt as a cat? What if he hurts something that he doesn’t have as a cat? Or what if he, a cat, hurts, say, his tail, which he does not have as a human? What then?)

(It’s possible that Nick thinks far too much about this, for how rarely that it happens.)

 

5a.  
Nick should have told Toff and Cat about the, well, cat thing, before he moved in with them, but he thought maybe it wasn’t going to be a big deal. He’s hardly turned into a cat at all since making the Kings full-time, anyway. He’s been getting regular minutes, and even if he’s really only expected to be on the shutdown line, it’s better than being a scratch, or cramming onto a shitty bus to make the AHL rounds.

So he should have told them, but he didn’t, and most of the time, it’s been okay. Toff and Cat are out a lot, so he often has the place to himself. On the days where he does find himself feeling smaller and furrier than normal, he has plenty of time to relax enough to change back.

But his good luck can’t possibly last forever, and he wakes up to a very excited gasp from Cat, right in his ears.

“Well, hello,” Cat coos, crouching down in front of the sofa. She looms in front of Nick’s face, almost nose-to-nose with him. She’s got a lot of shopping bags with her that catch Nick’s attention: one bag is pink and stuffed full of tissue paper, and he would _love_ to get to roll around in all of that. “Dodgey’s gonna love you! Ty, you didn’t tell me you got a cat!” She reaches one hand out, scritches Nick between the ears. He wants to meow at her, but her nails feel good in his fur, so he yawns and stretches out instead.

“It’s so cute!” Cat exclaims, and scoops Nick up to snuggle him close to her chest.

Nick squirms until Cat lets him go. That’s -- that’s cozy and warm and Cat is a really good hugger, but also, Nick feels like maybe he should not be that close to Cat’s boobs, especially without Toff around to, you know, be aware of the proceedings, and he should definitely not be enjoying it.

“Come back, little guy,” Cat says, reaching for him. Nick is pretty determined to not get snuggled again; he jumps and mewls a bit before scampering off to squeeze under the sofa.

“Aww, buddy.” Cat crouches down, peers under the sofa. Nick sticks out one little grey paw, tentatively poking Cat’s fingers. “Ty, seriously, this cat is adorable. It’s so shy!”

Nick makes a little noise -- he’s embarrassed to realize it’s a purr -- as Toff crouches down too. Toff reaches out and pokes Nick’s nose.

“It’s cute, but I didn’t bring it home, babe,” Toff says.

Cat reaches under the sofa, hooks her hands around Nick’s body, and pulls him out. “Well, then, did Nicky bring home a cat?” She cuddles Nick, nuzzling his fur with her nose. Nick purrs again, then louder, once Toff starts scratching him between the ears.

“Shoresy? That doesn’t sound like something he’d do.” Toff frowns, then takes Nick from Cat. He holds him up in the air and Nick squirms -- this isn’t the Lion King and he isn’t Simba and also, he doesn’t trust Toff not to drop him.

Of course, he squirms so much that Toff _does_ drop him. Nick flails in mid-air and lands awkwardly, his back legs splaying out behind him until he gets all his limbs working together so he can run off.

“Aw, big guy, come back,” Cat calls out as Nick speeds away, hurtling down the hallway and into the first open room he can find. It’s the bathroom, which has Nick’s favorite hiding space: the linen closet, with its giant mounds of soft, fluffy towels for him to nest in.

 

5b.  
Nick wakes up on the floor of the bathroom, covered in towels, with Cat and Toff standing over him. Very slowly, he reaches out for the closest towel and pulls it over his lap.

Toff snorts. Nick wants to flick him off, but he’s nicer than that.

“Did you have something you wanted to tell us?” Cat asks.

“I’m not wearing pants.” He wants to grab another towel, but all that are left within arm’s reach are washcloths, and that’s insulting to his honor.  The lack of pants is somehow probably less important than the fact that he just turned into a cat, but it’s what comes out of his mouth first.

“Obviously,” says Cat.

“Obviously,” repeats Toff, who’s got his phone out. He’s probably Snapchatting this whole exchange. Nick wonders if he could just ask to be sent back to the AHL or not. That could be nice. He scored a lot of goals there, he’d be okay, he thinks.

“Sometimes I’m a cat,” Nick admits. “Can I at least put on pants?”

“And then we can talk about what your cat name is?” Toff grins. He pokes at the screen of his phone. This is definitely going on the internet somewhere.

“Ty, come on,” Cat says, taking Toff by the arm. “He’s clearly a Snugglekins. Duh.”

Cat and Toff back out of the bathroom. Nick reaches out with one foot and closes the door. “Still Nick,” he shouts. “Definitely still Nick, you guys."

“Whatever you say, Snugglekins.” Toff laughs.

Nick doesn’t have any pants in the bathroom, he realizes.

Maybe he’ll just stay here. The towels make a great nest.

 


End file.
